lying in the dark// Susan

I lost my love on the highway,

black pounding our bodies, squeezing

divergent landscapes - car,

road, dirt, skin - together so

tightly. We drove

an off-road vehicle but we were on-road

kind of people. I knew happiness then

the way a bird knows her young

in an instant. I loved him in the quiet

of the SUV. The smell of hard work

rinsed and settled on his skin, his cheeks

as soft and white as sleep. I drove,

one hand on the wheel, the other caressing

his inseams. Isn't it funny

how we are all afraid of the dark? Sure,

you can say you're not

but who believes you? I was wearing

a blue satin dress, strapless

to show off my pilates-arms, which he nibbled

as I gripped the wheel

and him. This is how love hits you:

like a late-night collision,

a chance encounter, a turn

you take to fast. Blood scattered

like the contents of a purse

across the pavement. My love

flew off into the night.

I shone:

my arms so tanned and lean,

my dress lit up by headlights.

I thought I was on fire. I cried

deep into that boomy sea of pitch and tar -

I'm not afraid of you.

I lied.

Flower

Only eat flowers when daddy says so.

Don’t trust me on edible plants,

bird identification, or Chicago style. I’m hopeless.

Don’t trust him on grocery shopping,

buttoning women’s clothing, or exchange of pleasantries.

Actually don’t trust me on those either.

I guess what I’m saying is: Trust No One,

a phrase you heard often and early,

Agents Mulder and Scully batting their eyelashes

on the complete DVD set trying to keep me

awake in the chair at 4 a.m.

Dandelions, he said—your dad, not Agent Mulder—

are completely useful plants. You can eat them all up,

once you dig and scrub up that ass-bastard root.

And he tried to feed you the petals, tiny strips

of that same delicate fibre better flowers make their

better petals of. You didn’t like it. Good on you.

Now, if you ever meet a poisoned apple,

or an evil stepmother,

you will know what to do.

Dear Radar,

You were the Korean War Cassandra, except that everyone believed
when you said Choppers. Incoming.
weary voice older than your Iowa innocence
You bore all that bad news on your skimpy frame

Today you’d be diagnosed with exhaustion, army fatigue
Bed beside the only phone, your sleep must have been piecemeal,
eyelids fluttering at all those midnight flash-lit sneaks
into medical records, liquor cabinets
And still you were up every morning to bungle the bugling

They stunted your growth: everyone’s younger brother, cuddly confidante
Your suspended childhood their link to the pristine,
before gore and grief numbed run-on days

Were you playing along – the teddy bear, grape Nehis
just part of a greenhorn schtick?
Because I know you were wise, even wily –
that Jeep you mailed home piece by careful piece –
though skittish around women

But when I imagine you stateside, after, you’re not anyone’s pet
You’re worldly, capable, standing taller in your small shoes

Sincerely.

Secrets of Motherhood

dedicated to all the mothers of 1885

1.
When the cervix stops dilating
The heart begins.

You will be stretched thin.
You will always be enough:
you will never be enough.

You will carry this hole inside you
always.

2.
Umbilical cord: the mother's end
never goes away. When cut, it
recoils invisibly back inside.
Constricts the breathing,
other times the heart.
Warp and weft of intuition.

The baby's end dries up.
Falls off.

3.
Uterus: the size of a grapefruit.
What you know in your gut.
Source of life, the Great
Mystery:

to bleed, and bleed, days on end,
and yet
not die.

This is how you are a mother.
Look what you can bear, and
still stand upright.

4.
Learn when to bear down with pain.
Learn when to just breathe.

Know it will ebb, but
never cease. What you have
started has no end.

You cannot be
undelivered.

Swimmers

At night our bodies separate
and come together again, the blue
blankets rolling, lapping
at our shifting limbs like waves.

I depart and return to the shore
of your body, my left leg
meeting your right, our rivery veins
tracing parallel tattoos up our calves.

Divided by sleep we find different
lovers and streets to walk down
before returning to the familiarity
of pancakes and coffee. Just before

you wake, I catch your eyes, darting
like fish in the ocean of REM sleep,
go still as you come to the surface.

Bathroom: Claw-foot

steam lifts up slick porcelain walls
off the dust-specked surface of water
bending every colour through such tiny prisms
into the general air of the one room yet to be cleaned

sleepy in the bath I fade out of solid state
dreaming a hundred rainbows all possible
you and you all rise as high
as the happy cool of the room allows

up through the hoop that hold the curtain
up wrap the bulb that makes day of night
up to the poorly painted ceiling
and there

like a balloon meets a pin
a drop again
to wake in the liquid gone tepid

First Entry

Toronto, Saturday, 28th March, 1885 Received late this evening...wire from Lt.-Col. A.T.H. Williams, that he had been authorized to raise a Battalion for service in the North West and directing me to join Captain Winslow at Millbrook and raise a Company from Cavan and Manvers.

Showed Mother the wire myself,
it seemed the thing.
She put it on the shelf;
pressed my hand, but didn't cling.

And mayhap she finds, one hopes,
comfort in the stripes I earned
drilling hard with scopes
and barrels in sun-soaked fields: I learned
the ropes.

School has been fulfilling,
- halfway done my law degree.
Summer next, God willing
----I'll be home and turning twenty-three.

But first, quelling a rebellion will be my lot:
Not the worst. And Mother took it sportingly, I thought.

*** yeh - slow news day :) ***

Louis Riel's First Girlfriend
Reads the papers in Montreal when her husband is gone to work.
Calls it self-defense, for Mother leaves articles out
when his name appears.

Her parents quick to end that courtship - young half-breed Turk
His priestly studies, French heritage and sincerity clouded
by his lineage. Her tears

have long since ceased on his behalf but sometimes
she wonders: would he have led

rebellions in two provinces, if they'd wed?

Poem for my poor hands

from blank to cat scratch blanket

greasy teenager’s to bone-dry post-birth

cracked creased crazy

bitch’s

----

I could go on but won't at present.

Dear Henry,

I still blanch at any mention of the Sea of Japan
Your primetime death the tragedy that dimmed my childhood,
taught me the word injustice, and its blood-bitter taste

I’ve chosen to remember you as you were,
an uneasy leader, itchy in uniform, in charge, in decision,
hiding that big heart under your fishing vest

You had your own wobbly way of making them fall in

Your replacement, Potter, a bureaucratic wonk,
didn’t have your laugh lines, your cornball command

I’ve long-since forgiven your infidelities,
all those whippet-thin nurses with their deft hands,
And I’m sure Lorraine has too.

Sayonara.

Thirty-day pass: 1. Departure

This is your final call.

Rush through the echoing rotunda,

trampling brass leaves into stone floor.

Backpacks bouncing on our shoulders.

All passengers should now be on board.

Shock of sunlight as the train leaves the station,

escapes the city, picks up speed.

You try buttons on a new camera,

I stare across sunflower fields.

We are farther east than we've ever been.

We hear there are lakes upon lakes, there are towns

like Sioux Lookout, Parry Sound.

Leaving the known landscape, Red River behind us,

we watch. Something new will jump out at us soon,

and we'll snap it with a quick Look!

and shutter click. Over and over,

all the way to the coast.

another good woman undressing//Bree

another good woman undressing
in a dimly-lit motel, fresh sheets by the hour;
sinning in pearls is still sinning.

she combs her auburn hair, watching
the window from the corner of the mirror for his jaguar,
another good woman undressing.

she unbuttons her chiffon blouse, fingering
the edge of skin where nipples rise like tiny flowers
(sinning in pearls is still sinning).

as expected, he arrives, heavy-breathed, apologizing,
he's eager to devour
another good woman undressing.

but interrupted by a motel maid changing
a light bulb, her post-seduction moment sours -
sinning in pearls is still sinning.

she's comforted by the signs of other women cheating,
they are always in need of a shower,
another good woman undressing.

she leaves the motel well-fucked, cursing
the maids self-righteous scour:
another good woman undressing,
sinning in pearls is still sinning.

Dear Hot Lips,

I suppose I should call you Major Houlihan,
or at least Margaret, but the truth is
you never quite commanded my respect
Even though I admire flinty ambition,
any woman with those army brass balls

It couldn’t have been easy to stand that high
and mighty ground when every joke was on you,
and no sisters to lean on in the officer’s mess

But Frank Burns? That quivering, chinless priss?
Was it your shared hard-on for rigid discipline
or his limp submission?

I’ve always hoped it was simple human need:
the comfort of any body when the shelling is close,
heavy choppers on the way

Still, there was a time I’d picture that olive drab turtleneck
clinging to my own some-day curves
And I still find a certain strident femininty
in snug green trousers and combat boots

But I wonder, was it enough for you – or did you wish
to hold that scalpel rather than slap it into a man’s gloved hand?

And I’m curious to know if you ever stroll instead of march,
unzip your face into genuine smile
Because that time Henry kissed you – full and sudden on the mouth –
I saw you let go of the wheel, just for a moment,
stunned by the thrill of freedom

Sincerely.

But the Rats Love It In Swift Current...

Tuesday, 21st April We have been drilling steadily since we came and are now in a fair condition to fight, if it should be necessary. The men, I think, are not sorry to leave this place (Swift Current), as there are only half a dozen houses here, besides the railway buildings, and it is a tiresome place to live.

West of Winnipeg, the ground was level
as the sea. After a day, Brandon
gave way to land slightly rolling.

Moose Jaw was the nicest site
for a town I'd seen since home.
When we got to Swift Current

a light rain and high winds
made camping disagreeable,
despite the shelter of a basin

surrounded by higher land.
The winds here are severe.
And I had to march the men

out of the Indian encampment
close by, where they all
fraternized as if on a pleasure trip.

If MacDonald had not had the luxury,
the speed of so many rails
none of us would be here on these barren prairie trails.

***

A Two Week Lull
Three days after we sent Middleton
packing, we lost the last two men
who had been slowly dying, their families
gathered round with rosaries and drawn faces.

Riel
still hopes for peace; he spent the entire
battle, arms spread like Moses,
praying for victory. He promises
a miracle - perhaps this two week

peace is just that. Word has come
back: many of the Cree deny to fight,
though individual warriors wander in
each night. They know that just the same

They will all be held in blame, if
our battle is lost out west.
Half-breeds doubly cursed,
Doubly blessed.

The winds rise. I've made my peace
-------with family, God, and gun.
Prayed good use of the 32 rounds
-------left of ammunition.

Katherine

A woman needs to feel the heavy pulse
of steel, the throb of bullets in a gun.
Protection always fails in fucking, bolts
come loosened under years of jerks. I've done
my time in psych wards slowly coming clean;
I've washed away the blood I drew in search
of happiness - some fake suburban dream.
I need a touch as soft as rain, I thirst
for pools of curves, a landscape fresh that flows
from my hip bone to hers. I lap such lakes!
While men don't knock, they enter even though
the door is closed, my woman knows to wait,
her fingers circling the lock. My skin,
these walls of longing, part to let her in.

Girl brushes doll’s impassable lips

First learn this:
imagining what is not there
pretending what you are not.

If it’s made of atoms, you will figure it out.
If you can stick your hand in it, whack your head on it,
put it in your mouth, or get your nose stuck to it in the cold.

If it’s not there, though, it’s worth working at.
You have a toothbrush, and a baby, and the baby
has no teeth, but you can brush them anyway.
Next step: loose the toothbrush.
Then the lips, then the baby. Ible as well as able.

I like to see this kind of initiative.
You’re such a hard worker!

That’s what I’m supposed to say these days. I read it on the Internet.
Never: you’re so smart,
because some day you won’t be smart enough
and you’ll assume mommy was wrong all along and actually you’re dumb.
I should know. This happened to me
in grad school, forced to employ
different-coloured paper clips
to prove my creativity.

Back to you though.
I’d recommend something tangible in-between tooth-brushings—
maybe carpentry or electrical work.
Electrons pulse so very tangibly they’ll burn your baby down.

Susan

Oh I'm so bad at this whole 'housewife thing,'
the cooking, cleaning, matching towels and sheets.
Sure, watch me drown in domesticity.
Just notify the hunky life guard - she'll
be here all week. I always count on men
to up and leave. My daughter sees my falls
in love, my spills in lust. Alone again,
it's just us two, she's perfect, almost all
I'll ever need. But who'll appreciate
my heaps of lingerie? The virgin, tart,
and even Lois Lane? It's sad: my waist's
ten times to small to match this bloated heart.
I'm sick of new beginnings, absent ends;
the road to love is slick with hairpin bends.

(trois)

Four, he turned
...............Four -
...............we pitched a tent in the back yard
...............and stared at the stars thru the tepee-like opening
...............Il me demande le nom de chaque étoile
...............et, comment loin sont-ils?
...............y sont ici, bonhomme
...............dans la tente avec nous
...............ce beau soir d’avril
.
At least, it's what i wished
when i wished upon a star tonight,
another moment or two
with the little boy who
turned four
.....sans moi
aujourd'hui.

Long Distance

It was a talky day,
all full of your kids’
move to Texas—
funny, them
all becoming nurses
now our own nurse
is gone.
Since Kay died …

Reaching out over –

I was gonna say wires,
but phones have none
these days –

touching the sister
we can, one at a time.

So good of you to be here
so long, staying months
through the decline and falls
of the fun one, the one
with four grown kids
and decades of hospital
hall miles on her
feet, a healing touch
right there except
when her body
mutinied and we
could only take turns
testing for our own
catastrophe.

You’re clean for now,
under intense observation
like all of us, so far
only two lost our beans –
kidney beans, a joke –
get it? What’s eating me?
No more of the same

I hope. Running out
of spare parts,
hoping the recipe for this
mess got lost in the months
since we took
our turn on the table –

not you, but me
and the other one. Two hit,
two missed. So we talk

and do the waiting over
and over again,

thanks to modern technology –
anything’s possible.

Bedroom: White-wash

Around the room various white cloth and wood,
paper, ceramic, suitcase - eyes pause long minutes

while marks appear. A new alphabet of knick and smudge
recorded in a dictionary of accidental bodies

in collision with furniture. All white surfaces
scuff with association.

Inside, tightened to a fist, my heart
pounds slow regulars against my inside bones

leaving marks of its own: finger print,
bruised plaster, the hole where the clock once hung.

From what I can decipher
everything is accounted for.

10pm


All those restless years of lying in bed
with newly-minted teeth, laughter
and the MASH theme rerunning up the stairs
A bedtime timeline that hived off the youngest child –
whispering spelling homework, petty playground anxieties,
into the hall-light half-dark

How I’d wish for the hot stab of an earache,
some small latenight affliction, to admit me
to that wonderland of big sisters and grown ups,
the bag of jujubes passed along the chesterfield
and Hawkeye and Hot Lips with their khaki slapstick

Even now I still hear the phantom:
da-daaaah de de de daah-daah
But there’s no 4077 on channel 12
only cheap Hollywood gossip, reality plastic surgery
There’s no magic left in 10pm, just weeknight ache,
the sticky littered sidewalk after a parade’s gone by

Cups

Like rabbits

what goes on in the dark of the cupboard above
where the pinhead mealymouthed hooks grasp not so tenderly
the handles—

Like cats too—

I may throw them like abused children at charitable authorities
but here they roll back again from every single goddamn
flea market, thankyou bag, flannelpajama promotional effortium,
sad symposium and unfortunate fundrive.

Covered with—
cartoon birds, disused regional flags,
best dads and overthehill mamas,
disappearing Captain Kirks,
lead leaves,
handpainted periwinkles.
Engorged with coffee crud and battered
tea leaves, with the same prognostication every time:
I will be in my cups
and cannot be rid of them
without loosing my place.

Twenty-eight lines to leave you by

The rainstorms, one for each atrophied leg
of my leaving, clear you out entirely, my girl:
I’ve no muggy fingers on the bones
of my wrist, no sluggish midsummer pulse.

Here, the rusty quartzes in the gravel road
are yellowed teeth & a mouth full
of light, are knots of russet hair
at the day’s blueing nape. The robin hopping

from the road, all ruddy herself, all early
evening, flickers once, twice,
then drops into shin-high grasses
& is gone.

Here, I pull on socks against ice-box evenings
& peer between lace, learn early
to startle at lonely evening cars rattling
down the lane. The streets are as wide

as a page. The river kinks just beyond the yard
& the horned skulls in flowerbeds are sweetened
by stands of white lilacs
their back-of-knee pulp all over.

You are pale, my girl, & insistent:
the last few days, you wanted me
within earshot, wanted me no further than think
thought...until I muttered that I was going

& I went. The sky here is too sure of itself,
the sky here is too sure & I revise
this dappled manuscript every time
you refuse to come to the phone.

* * *

Hey all, given that I've got nothing (I mean, nothing...) in terms of new poetry so far, I thought I'd share a slightly older poem. It hasn't been workshopped or critiqued anywhere, so I'd really appreciate your good eyes on it...

Sorry for the 'cheat.' But oh well.

A.

the fact of the matter is, we put the beading

where the leather's most worn. fringes
wick water from seams. sure call it
fashion if you want. these young
ones have forgotten the real
f-words - form, function.
fancy-stitching to hold
the patches down.
once, nothing at
all was wasted:
nowadays it's
that nothing
is saved.it's
all thrown
away box
and all.
& we
each
only
get
1
.



dedicated to Sherry & Greg who had me beading up a storm in the summer sun, and Elder Mary Lee, who makes things I can only dream of

How to Begin to Forget

After nine days I noticed
the ghost. Your coke

wedged to the back of the fridge.
I cracked the metal tab,

snapped the fingernail
that so recently poked you

in your left eye. It was the first time
I touched the tip

of the hand that emptied
eleven other cans. I sipped

dark liquid, streaking condensation
down the side, the sweet taste

on my lips. After seven days
I gathered my clothes, left

one blanket, one lamp,
and a hundred sheets

of blank paper. After
three days I watched

a movie, the plot of
new skills that reminded

me of the first ten hours
when I drank the last

of your cold beer,
my Moosehead belch

into the empty air of solitude,
the room where a statue stood

in a bare corner. He was missing
a hand, a wrist, so much

of an arm. After five hours
I studied the right side

of the blue couch for symptoms-
depression. After two

hours I stripped your name off
the door of the place you'd slept in—

ripped the tag in half,
tossed the small slip of paper in

to the garbage where it worked its way
underneath coffee grounds, a banana peel,

an orange rind that scented
those traces of you.

Hi everyone,

I'm delighted to be May Daying again. My goals are modest this year, as I'm working full-time and moving. I hope to post 4-6 poems. After almost a year of working on revisions for my first book, Night Gears, which is coming out this fall with Wolsak and Wynn, I'm looking forward to working on some new poems. And looking forward to reading yours as well.

Bren

Diamonds Raining

It’s past time
when I can call tonight,
past the rules that let
me hear you carp about the same
old grilled cheese and other
lunch lady fare –

the bane of your teen
wisdom, the boredom
slabs you have to eat
every day waiting –

adults buzzing
in your distant hive, trying
to make honey out of
nightmares and betrayal.

You gone so long,
long as your legs
grew like trees but never

able to outrun the pain,
trapped in silent lies,
wrapped in dead fish smells
passing for family.

Now the sound of your voice
sounds like diamonds raining

and we get to keep them
all and run to the sea

laughing, washing away
all the stink, where
everything tastes great and

you get to say no, where
what you know is
to be a child.

Strange Men

**i wanted to spit out all five character sonnets in a row but i could not, for the life of me, write a sonnet today. this poem still belongs to the DH series. also, i could not indent!! (thus the underscores)**

you know the kind:
unannounced, dark-
haired, thoughtful
____in bed, too
____good to be true

in the supermarket
the pulse of their eyes
beating in time
to the rise, fall,
____rise of your ass
____in yoga pants

on the street, steps
out of sync
with lingering
thoughts, their
one-hand-in-pocket
stroll, small
smile at peopled
windows, the
firm grip, cool
____like a blunt object,
____ knock-out

the friend-of-a-
friend, back-
lit with run-on
sentences that trail
like the middle
of phrases, leave
you looking
for your close,
leave you nowhere,
____stranded, yes,

they leave you
downstairs, desperate
at 3 am checking, re-
checking the door,
your heaving
breasts, laced
& raised, against a curtain:
just another
suburban woman,
____a border that wants
____to be crossed

Dear Hawkeye,

By now you’ll have noticed I didn’t marry you,
despite all those years spent planning –
Monday to Friday at 10pm –
in the basement of a suburban bungalow far from the front,
from the wounded and the blood and the tattle-tale Majors

I know you won’t be jealous to hear
that my husband is no crackerjack doctor
trapped in the khaki hell of meatball surgery
but he has a steady hand, tender bedside manner

Sure, he can’t mix a gut-rot martini straight from the still,
let alone toss it back in one easy swallow,
but he makes me laugh like you always have,
until I’m ready for triage:
face in need of sutures, belly of bandaging
(And he does it without a laughtrack)

Furthermore, I’m confident he won’t junk me
for some bombshell nurse
And I could never be as certain with you –
lanky you, with that rakish cowboy hat,
that rightous talent and appetite for women
How could I trust your squint-eyed grin?

And if this news dissapoints you,
please know I’ll never forget
your stories of Crabapple Cove,
those hijinks in the Swamp,
And that time – do you remember? –
you were so brave and handsome,
cavalier and cracking wise in your unbuckled helmet,
it’s the standard by which I’ve measured all other men

Love, always.

Loft: Wood Stove

Siren traffic crow
sound through the chimney to the open stove
where the coal tinkles like chips of glass

Soot leaves black marks
my arms reach into the dark mouth again
rearrange, empty a little breath from my lungs

Flames whoosh, the street creeps
down the black stove pipe
sounds small as a figurine screaming

Tinkle wail the flame dies out
soot rubs off ash turns white
a little water takes the marks off

Falling in Love/The Walls

I fell in love with a brick wall
yellow, Victorian,
his beard drooping and dragging
in Humpty Dumpty’s failed yolk
at his feet. He loved me because
I was not disgusted. I fell in love
with a concrete block
the kind they build walls out of
tougher than brick but prematurely grey.
She loved me because of my hard head.
I fell in love with a bulldozer whose
gargantuan nose eclipsed her gargantuan eyes.
She did not love me
she was jealous.
I am chained.

Under Canvas

"May 4th As we neared Clarke's Crossing this afternoon, "B" and "D" Companies were much disappointed to receive orders to remain there and guard the supplies assembled at that point, while "A" and "C" were to proceed down the river and join Middleton at the front...we landed at Clarke's and went under canvas as cheerfully as possible

12 days of drilling every year
on a city field - does this a soldier make?
One of the wounded from Fish Creek
told me how that night, sleet turned to slush

huddled against the weather, groans
of wounded and those who had barged
across the river near the end without
coats or gear - how he wished for a house. This morning

in my tent as I wait for dawn to come
I am chilled to my soul. Birds
call as if they are the only
way to summon the sun.
My hands are as cold as the barrel of my gun.

* * *
Mistahimaskwa Frog Lake, massacre of nine

Nine men were killed at Frog Lake to feed hundreds and it was called a Massacre.
Eight men were hung at Fort Battleford to appease the white man, and it was called Justice.

On the second of April, we begged Thomas Quinn
food for our starving. We were all winter-thin.
The treaties we'd signed promised in times
of pestilence and famine we'd be given relief.

If the Queen was a liar, Quinn was a thief.

He turned us like lamed rabbits to a wolf, sent us home empty-handed
Banished back to the bush, some turned to the landed
Who'd profited from all that we'd given away
Our children were dying - what could I say?

Quinn even refused us our regular rations
Hungry mothers, pregnant women, small children - our passions
for our loved ones was stronger than hunger or fear.
Wandering Spirit saw only one path draw clear.

He gave Quinn four warnings to leave Frog Lake.
Of those four it was only the fifth he would take
Written clear on a bullet. More men filled with lead
- I ran to them shouting "stop" - but nine men lay dead.

My men ceased that day, and without blood burnt the Fort.
Saved briefly from famine, I feared our reward
would not be long-lived. For I had no delusion:
While treaties were idle promises, not so retribution.

As I think on this time I am two years in prison
With one year of life left, if unmistaken my vision.

Both Big Bear and Poundmaker believed in passive resistance and holding out in hope for the treaty promises to be kept. Big Bear had, in fact, held off signing the treaties for six years because of their unfavorable terms, but had finally signed on three years before 1885, to promises that his people would be fed. That winter their bands were starving, and when they heard of the Métis defeating the RCMP at Duck Lake, some of Big Bear's men decided it was worth risking their own lives in order to obtain food for their hungry, when Big Bear's pleadings fell once again on deaf ears.

Remembering My Color

Maroon sits darker in my head
than red, that mere beginning of blood

but not the darker shade it wears
when spilled or smeared

off sharp blades
or dried

onto smooth clean surfaces
reflecting operating lights.

Maroon seems just the right
mix of lead and air to paint

curves inside a hollowed cavern
left with only half its load.

Maroon is browned crimson
changed by exposure –

outside air never intended
to touch the soft recesses

of factory flesh where
so much work and chaos

tremble beneath maroon wounds.

(two)

she forms semi-scissions
with a three inch nail
across her thighs
..........lets out a sigh
of salvation
before the tears arrive
.
..........jesus watches on, a
chamfered hand dangling at his side

Lockdown

Lockdown

I bad-girl escaped
my building before the lockdown
expecting to return to a world of quieter, humbler people
people too cowed by authority to boldly take
a two-hour lunch just to not crawl under a desk.
I and my friend in the next cubicle, slyly
winking as we shuffled toward the bus-stop,
A cold day in May. Buddhist restaurant. Lingering downtown
over baby soaps and camera batteries, just to make sure.

Of course we are punished for our escapade:
lockdown postponed. Technical difficulties.
Let’s all work out the kinks in our plans
before the gunman arrives: mine is to make peace
with my inner teenager, the one refusing
public safety and a proper coat too.

Bree

Good manners make good neighbors. What they say
is true: you can't resist my berry jam,
my lemon pie, my slow-cooked ham, displays
of books that feature Mrs. Van de Kamp.
I fold in two, in four, I bake, I tuck,
I dollop, crimp, and glaze, I darn, I baste,
I roast, ah-ha, you see, I glow with duck,
with glee I goose, I host, cerise flambe!
Now neatly cover up the past and scrub
those dirty memories clean. My Orson, best
in polo's, vests, and well-pressed pants, he loves
to keep things tidy. Me, I never rest,
perfection never blinks. All guilt's a sieve
it draws refined those sins we can't forgive.

Named


I still don’t know why I laughed all those years ago
when you told me what your last name had been
until age eight when your parents split

Maybe because it lacked the snug precision
of the one I’ve always seen you in –
your name now a perfect black t-shirt and jeans
While the other seemed tweed-scratch
and bulky, musty with old country
Before I knew the man who brought it to Canada, at 18,
buzzed with the thrill of typing it under a newspaper headline
Who gave it to you, your brother and sister,
never guessing it wouldn’t take root in the new world

After you’d moved and everything settled
you got to make the choice: keep or change
Too young for loyalties, you just liked the tough snap sound
And your mom baked a cake, updated her records with a red pen

When the time came, you knew you couldn’t ask me
to abandon the name I’ve always known
But I never told you I was tempted or that, even now,
like a junior high girl practicing some future signature,
I test its delicious weight on my tongue

A Soldier's Duty

Monday, 4th May This morning we passed Saskatoon, where we saw several of the men who had been wounded at Fish Creek. The sight of these brave fellows appeared to fire our fellows with redoubled ardour to reach the front...we had all been expecting to be in the thick of things in a day or two, and here we are cast ashore on a barren prairie...A soldier's duty, however, is to obey

And like Gospel Thomas I can put my finger in their wounds
This war is real. So close to the front, seems I'll be left to guard:
not fight. More of the drills
I've done since I was 13. My glory: to keep safe the horse feed.

At least I tread ground again. No more
puddle-hopping in that sand-clogged
tributary. Wind blew colder
off that water. The very air is hostile.

Middleton called Fish Creek victory
- 43 wounded, 10 dead -
no bodies left behind of the Métis.
Still, point is: they fled.

* * *

La bataille de la coulée des Tourond

What we lacked in numbers
Surely we made up in force:
We shot the fur cap off Middleton's head
and a bullet grazed his horse

Just so, the very thing we were trying to save:
Our long lots to the river. What they called Fish Creek
We called Little Beaver River: the army's only way across, ma coulée.

Still in my heart I see my boys, scratching in the dirt with Gabriel
Where best to take cover. I hid my tears in what little I could pack.
Slapped the cows out of the barn like I was banishing every hidden fear.

We joined the others at Batoche, digging at our
riverbank caves, nails black with the clay. Every
sandy root was my own heart, the veins

gripping desperately to the soil we'd claimed, what claimed us,
held us all here. Tangling past the wildgrass, prairie roots sink deep: needful
in these winds, these winters. The summer sun we might not see.

So. The English Scouts saw fresh tracks. Surprise lost,
only marksmanship left. That night my youngest son
Wincing at a tear said he'd pretended they were jacketed deer.

We turned them back with their fallen. One of Dumont's nephews wounded, one dead.
The guilty relief and sorrow of my arms around
Marguerite, wife of dead Jose Vermette.

These are the numbers the women
count: nine husbands gone since March
Forty-three children left fatherless.

And we left off our caves to dig different holes.
Caves to save, hollows to hold, always leftover earth: inside
a yawing pit never filled.

Hello.

I'm back to participate in my second year of the May Day Poetry Project. I look forward to writing new work for this blog in the coming weeks.

My first book, To End a Conversation, came out with Thistledown in 2008. And I am finishing up a long poem manuscript called Tigers.

Happy writing!

Waking From a Late Nap

The evening scent unfurls
blue banks of iris,
sharp green cut grass
and almost black
charring burgers.

Spring dreams slide away
with the neighbors’ cat

jumping on my bed
then out the back door.

Clouds still rain-full
shift into darkness
dotted with streetlights,

distant traffic lullabies
sing their way through
new-leafed sweet gums,

while peonies prepare
their pink explosions
for morning.

Introduction / 35: Intimacies

This is my first May Day Project. I missed actual May Day yesterday due to technical difficulties, but here I am, sitting next to the baby in a dark bed with my laptop glowing and just having written the following before turning to sleep before finishing the weekend and going back to the office tomorrow.

I cut and pasted from Word which is apparently why all the extra line breaks, which are not supposed to be there. -- Karen (K.I. Press)

35: Intimacies

As sweet as it comes—

chocolate when the baby sleeps.

Smells of memory.

Hits you at the back of the throat when you think you’ve forgotten.

Some hopeful old creep on the phone wants

to trade your wallet for your panties.

Those were the days—weren’t they?

Wireless, across rooms, across houses, across fathoms,

eons--eons necessitating overrated face creams and

complicated mucus measuring techniques assisting

in the impregnation of she-whales, whose mates' twelve-foot mobile

whale wangs, once the stuff of sea monsters,

are narrated calmly by Sir David Attenborough.

A pungent nip before bed, or a cup of warm milk?

Speaking of, the restless daughter

needs a nip or two herself,

as even whale babies do in their mammalian glory.

Mutually, hormonally, narcotically,

on the street to sleepland,

the scene, a bed of mystery infant dreams and sleep so very well deserved while daddy

relaxes shooting something with his keyboard.

The Poem

made me do it, though in it’s defense it was
only developing, a potato sprouting
after months of resting in cold storage.

And, let’s be honest, this isn’t
confession in the way an admission
can be used in a court of law, the hammer

of a gavel pronouncing me guilty as charged.
Nor is it the kind of disclosure
where names will be written in the breakdown—

a general list of fault as the accumulation,
letter after letter, until we’re left worrying only
about the worst in ourselves. No, this

confession happens when your hands appear
cut off, hidden from my view
under my breasts and I begin to feel

the slight tremor of your right palm
shuddering along my chest’s scar,
my thin-membraned irregularity,

metal-barbed bites from so long ago.
You establish this movement by saying nothing,
your palm reading rows of lines—heart

line, head line while our tongues figure
it out, translate that moment into
seconds that tick against the inside

of what our mouths continue to sever,
our fear stuffed within us
as we continue to come clean.

Lurking!

Just to let you know, I'm here. Yes, lurking.

Might not write much. Hope to make some comments when I get time. Hope to have fun reading everyone on MayDay!

I'm in Regina. I'm doing my 5th tour of duty. I think.

Istanbul

For A.P.V.


She sautés potatoes in coats
the colour of, she imagines,
wet Turkish sand, spreads cheese
on apples in anticipation
of weeks of only feta
from the Istanbul market. As she waits
for the brunch guests, the word Tuesday
sings through her head, in tune
with the kettle, the dove
perched on the fence. A packing list
of the familiar: the orange kitchen,
the varnished bulk of serving dishes,
the fretful bark of her father's dog
at the crunching gravel in the driveway
as they arrive to see her off, to eat,
to take her aside in the kitchen for a hug
and an everything will be different now,
which becomes the new chorus in her head on Tuesday
as her plane rushes forward into sky.

Four months. Four
months of emails
instead of dinners
out, but here she is,
feet in a sea
blue as her mother's
pottery, tasting
of saltwater and sticky
dates, his mouth
at her ear, his arms
at her waist, stronger
than the compass-pull
of her northern home.
Istanbul has released
him and now
they drift across the continent,
the only familiar thing
his body, the only familiar
sound the rattle of their next train.

hidden (one)

she hides the broken jesus
beneath the crisply cleaned sheets
before
she answers his knock
.there is no redemption when
he is there to caress her sins
away
........tuck and patti play
to the symphony of
rules expunged, ephemeral
pleasures paid for
after he is gone

The Visit

[this is one section of a longer poem]

From the penthouse restaurant we watch

the city disappear. Falling snow

smudges streetlights, rubs away

outlines of shops, gas stations, cars

crossing the bridge— blurry lumps

of movement. This isn't the view we came for.

Next morning, silence. Snow's hip-deep on sidewalks.

City's quieter than a small town on a Sunday.

Later, after breakfast, a sound: some guy buzzing his snowmobile

down the streets, just because he can. Radio talks of nothing

but the storm. We turn it off, finally, and go out, our boots labouring

through drifts. Each footfall, each breath, leaves a sharp outline

in the still air. We leave the neighbourhood and walk

down the middle of Pembina Highway, alone.

Hello in May

I am rather late in posting - so much to catch up with already! This is my second year, and I am very glad to be back. No particular plans for this month aside from writing as much as possible.

Sapphire 2

Sapphire's blue body suspends-

like one of those vaudeville tricks

men used to watch from velvet seats

when the city was newly stolen;

there are no wires in this act,

only breath

less-ness

as Sapphire waits for digital

word, or a call filled with echo,

or the hard knocked door

at midnight by the boys in green

who roll quietly up her street;

Sapphire's body suspends blue

air-less,

because her man

(one of the old-fashioned kind)

father to her two girls

sleeps but does not sleep,

eats but does not eat,

cries but does not cry,

far away in a thankless land.

Rehash


The movie scene: two old men
smoking on a park bench
pokes shadows of memory
And I try again to explain déjà vu to you
without saying this conversation is an example
because I know you won’t laugh

Too bewildered by the illogical,
its unnerving presence in your home,
you – who can answer any question
instantly yes or no –
tell me I must have seen the clip
before

There’s no point describing the eerie echo
and the wash of vague recognition
becomes just another of the things I know
and you won’t believe
on scientific principle
An addition to the dowry
of mysterious truths I’ve brought to you:
how to get blood out of a white t-shirt,
how long meat keeps in the fridge,
how to sew a button,
how magic can flicker, unbidden,
through the brain


(Marika, I liked your button-sewing poem so much I had to have one of my own. Thanks for the inspiration!)

Gabrielle

It's true, y'know, 'bout Prada, stretches thin
like "yeah-yeah" sunsets, fades in creases, sags -
it's overrated. Shopping discount bins
is painless (all my bling on payment), snag
those wheelchair spaces. What? My husband's blind
okay? Don't ask me how it happened! Some
freak accident! So what, we're poor, it's fine!
I used to screw the gardener (yeah, so dumb),
but Carlos never showed me that he cared.
The second time he married me I knew:
his secret offshore bank accounts...we'd share.
Two daughters, one blind husband, bye-bye shoes!
The money split; I stayed when things got tough.
My heart so full: the weight I gained in love.

from Interregnum

10

Emotions ooze like oil spills,

tarring the bird in the cage of our chests.

The river at night is a different oil spill.

Lit from within, houses that line the valley are torches.

I didn’t see the deer.

Dusky light. My heart swerved.

Moving water is always in the present tense.

And we’re stranded on shore.

Saudade.

Saudade.

Sunday Rest

May Day has come and gone on this benighted country with sunshine and solitude...The Colonel read prayers on the scow this morning and again reminded us of home and civilization.

We spend our time dislodging from
sandbars - I am riding a slow-moving tick
- framed by a riverbank thickening
with brush and colour

as if our eyes are what draw the
woods as if even nature seeks refuge
from the bleak plains beyond -

and we are reminded God is on our
side. That might and right
shall prevail.

By the hour Mother's on her usual bench,
gardenias and starched lace.
On the Lord's Day I find myself
in a Godforsaken place.

* * *
May 2nd: Cut Knife Hill Pitikwahanapiwiyin
Jacob-with-the-Long-Hair, an Elder who always rose early
Heard the splash of soldiers in the creek
Four hundred armed men, the clink and clatter
- no animal or wandering spirit
lost in the dawn

Fear, safety: we had gathered
like the buffalo themselves, one tribe.
Waking not to morningsong and the stir of fires:
but two cannons and a Gatling gun firing
on our families

the weight and tangle of collapsing tipi
- surprise of skin and pole on my childsmooth
face

wondering how i'd awoken in a cloudless thunderstorm
at dawn, being pulled free by my mooshum, a
silenced wail from a sister

Skimming flight to the ravines: my father
was one of the group of warriors who charged
the gunfire

our mothers counted children
smothered cries with breasts, splayed hands,
whispers and wide eyes.

Pîhtokahânapiwiyin, him they call Poundmaker
gave us quiet assurance while Fine Day
took position atop the hill
signalling attacks. I,

I brought him water after three hours.
He did not take his eyes from the field.

Our men were swift, fearless
as foxes. From the ravines they would rush
and return like rainwater. Deadly game: we were
wherever they turned their backs.

Their big gun had broken: we gave them
no targets. When they became
a wedge, we crept along the ravines
always drawing closer, a tightening
snare.

My people have always known
the gift, the curse

of invisible

At the end, when they fled, Fine Day
signalled pursuit. Not one of their soldiers
would have held life after that day
but for Pîhtokahânapiwiyin.

"They came for a fight, and found it.
Now let them go."

The greatest of warriors
makes peace, our Elders
say it is so.

Now old myself, I look back on that time
and know we all received less mercy than he gave.

Three years in Stony Mountain Pen: he shouted to the judge
he'd rather be sent that very day
to his grave.

Getting a Hand On Harm

A fist of pain presses firm
into my slit side,
knuckles lodged deep
like a frozen extension
of a lazy punch

waiting for indefinite signals
to unfurl fingers --

Blazing sharp nails bloom to attention,
as if for inspection and
trace florescent nerves alive.

Indiscernible arcs of rainbow sparks,
pulse invisible in the night recesses
of my mutilated cave, sealed

dark as a refrigerator with the door
closed --

wire nerve shelves sagging --

missing flesh chunks removed,
still crying for the connections

dangling
and sparking

unaware of the slick dark incursion.

Just clenching the pain.